The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released its latest CSA research, Assessing the Impact of Non-Preventable Crashes on CSA Scores. ATRI’s research confirms the need for reforms that would direct the resources of the Agency and highway enforcement to the carriers that need it.

In this analysis, ATRI investigated the impact that excluding non-preventable crashes would have on motor carrier CSA scores. The analysis used carrier crash records, mapped to the FMCSA's Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS) database, to identify a small and non-controversial subset of non-preventable crashes with the following causes:

Animal collision

Other vehicle hits legally parked truck

Other vehicle ran a stop light / sign and hit a truck

The driver of the other vehicle was DUI

Truck-assisted suicide

The ATRI analysis then removed these crashes and "recalculated" the Crash Indicator BASIC measure. Among the more than one dozen carriers in ATRI's analysis, the Crash Indicator BASIC decreased nearly 15 percent once the non-preventable crash subset was removed.

"The trucking industry has identified a number of flaws in FMCSA's calculation of carrier safety performance through the CSA BASICs and perhaps none is more egregious than the inclusion of non-preventable crashes in the Crash Indicator BASIC. ATRI's latest analysis, using a very conservative definition of non-preventable crashes, demonstrates just how skewed FMCSA's BASIC calculations can be," said Scott Mugno, a member of ATRI's Research Advisory Committee as well as Vice President of Safety and Maintenance for FedEx Ground.

ATRI estimates non-preventable crash costs exceed $68 million for the 15 carriers in the analysis.